David Beckham has spent the best part of a decade in the media spotlight and has gone from hero to villain and back again so many times that a count has been lost.

A lot of players seem to find themselves loved or hated, but there can be few like Beckham who swing from one extreme to the other with such regularity.

Mud rarely stuck to Gary Lineker, who has successfully carried his angelic persona into a television career.

Likewise, at the opposite end of the scale, Vinnie Jones has carved out a living from the bad boy image he cultivated on the field.

It is not quite as easy to see which way Beckham will go when his playing days end.

In his time he has been the media's new young darling, a petulant brat, a potential England saviour, the most reviled man in the country, a national hero, an innocent victim forced out of his club, a strong family man and an alleged adulterer.

Now he is just one of a list of several reasons why England's Euro 2004 campaign ended early.

Along with Urs Meier, Sven-Goran Eriksson and the penalty spot, Beckham has copped a lot of the flak for the European Championship run which ended in quarter-final defeat to Portugal in Lisbon.

People always love to talk about Beckham, whether it be to praise him or complain about his on or off-field exploits, and right now he is getting it in the neck for his lack of fitness.

Beckham was not the only guilty party - Paul Scholes and Michael Owen also came in for some stick - but England really needed him to perform to have a chance of winning the tournament.

Had he recently recovered from injury, as in the last World Cup, his below-par displays could have been easily explained, but there should be no excuse for not being fit for a major tournament.

England and Eriksson needed their players to be in peak condition and it is a poor excuse to blame the training regime at Real Madrid.

Even if he was unhappy that too much time was devoted to ball work rather than conditioning, he is surely professional enough to have done some work of his own.

Beckham is now an experienced footballer, and Euro 2004 was his fourth major tournament.

He is not a wide-eyed youngster unaware of the demands placed on teams in such competitions.

Particularly after the 2002 World Cup, when fitness and the heat were a problem, he should have known the requirements.

Is it asking too much of pampered footballers, who earn millions a year and have plenty of spare time, to do a little fitness work off their own backs?

Beckham may understandably be reluctant to go for a jog down the Gran Via but he takes home enough money each day to convert one of his own spare rooms into a private gym.

He says playing football is all he has ever wanted to do.

He has achieved a lot and, if he wanted to, he could walk away - but if he is serious about winning major international honours he has to put the hard yards in.

It may be tough in the full glare of publicity, but this is partly a world he has created for himself, and this is what he must work through.